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Topic: need help (Read 5435 times)

I've been trying to solve the issues i'm having my own, but i obviously need help guys. i will be greatfull for any help because i have sought answers from the wiki and searching the forums. I have reinstalled 8.10 at least 10 times due to various problems. I am unable to use my wireless router, spa 3102, or boot any MD's. thus far i have tried connecting an md directly to the core. the md's are not being automatically created and do not show up as devices. i was able to get online on the core, but still tried switching etho interfaces in the admin site. i tried swaping the cables. i tried removing knetmanager from the core startup. i tried creating md's because i was still getting to the rebooting in 5 secs post i saw mentioned in another post which prompted me to remove the knetworkmanager. all of the macs for the devices show up on the admin site. im lost, i guess its a dchp networking problem any diagnosis?

1) It seems that all that's ever posted is how people have a lot of problems with LMCE or that XX system is better and offers more. Judging from your Sep 2009 join date and the problems you're having, I just want you to know that once you get the system up and running it is amazing. The possibilities and the conversations you will likely have about what your system can do are probably beyond your wildest dreams- at least they were for me.

2) I too was having that 5 second reboot problem- it seems that something happened in one of the latest alphas that caused this...

I have found that if you run the command:

Quote

/usr/pluto/bin/startup-script.sh

on your core- either by directly interacting with your core or- as I have done- from putty on a windoze box, that will fix that error.

3) As for the online issue- my MDs are not able to access the internet (but the core can, as you describe) until I hit the "update" button from the admin pages. From your post, you're familiar with the admin pages/site- so if you go to "Advanced" -> "Network" -> "Network settings" at the bottom of the page will be a "Update" button next to the "Reset" button. Click this once and you will probably find you can connect to the internet- I am posting from a computer that I just did the above to get connected. I think about every time you do a reload or regen of the core you will have to do this. Just a note- it is vital that you have 2 nics in your core and that eth0 is connected to your WAN and eth1 is connected to your LAN.

1) It seems that all that's ever posted is how people have a lot of problems with LinuxMCE or that XX system is better and offers more. Judging from your Sep 2009 join date and the problems you're having, I just want you to know that once you get the system up and running it is amazing. The possibilities and the conversations you will likely have about what your system can do are probably beyond your wildest dreams- at least they were for me.

2) I too was having that 5 second reboot problem- it seems that something happened in one of the latest alphas that caused this...

I have found that if you run the command:

Quote

/usr/pluto/bin/startup-script.sh

on your core- either by directly interacting with your core or- as I have done- from putty on a windoze box, that will fix that error.

3) As for the online issue- my MDs are not able to access the internet (but the core can, as you describe) until I hit the "update" button from the admin pages. From your post, you're familiar with the admin pages/site- so if you go to "Advanced" -> "Network" -> "Network settings" at the bottom of the page will be a "Update" button next to the "Reset" button. Click this once and you will probably find you can connect to the internet- I am posting from a computer that I just did the above to get connected. I think about every time you do a reload or regen of the core you will have to do this. Just a note- it is vital that you have 2 nics in your core and that eth0 is connected to your WAN and eth1 is connected to your LAN.

HTH

oh no, don't get me wrong at all. I love lmce already. I'm not a complainer, i've just run out of things to try to get things working. everything connected to my switch is not working, including my wireless router. i have tried the /usr/pluto/bin/startup-script.sh which worked to get one md booted, but did not get anything connect to said switch working. after using /usr/pluto/bin/startup-script.sh followed by a reboot of the core....it now leads to the boot hanging at "loading lmce" and then black screen, so i had to a reinstall again.

Do I understand it correctly, that you use the script and then reboot the core...or does the script cause the reboot on your core?I am asking this, because if the script causes the reboot, then I guess your install is really fubar.If you do a reboot after that script, then you're making a mistake, because as I understand it, the script either starts or restarts some processes (like dhcp) which didn't start or crashed during bootup.In my experience, after I started the script, I didn't have to go to the network-settings anymore to get internet-connection on my clients...actually starting the script after reboot should be the only thing you need to do to get you going...then depending on the hardware of your md's they should be setting up and work without too much trouble.

This may, or may not, be relevant to you (or others who come across this thread in their quest for a working system).

BUT

If you only have one switch on your internal network, or you have several, but they don't in any way form a loop, then switch off Spanning Tree, or enable a feature that goes by various names on different switches (Fast Port, Uplink Fast etc.)

If this helps, great, if not, sorry for wasting your time...

The issue I have experienced (not just with MCE but in my life as a Networking professional and trainer) is as follows...

In order to prevent bridging loops, we have Spanning Tree Protocol. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say, that whenever the state of a port on a switch changes, it blocks all traffic for a period of time whilst it makes sure that the port won't form a bridging loop.

Back in the days of Hubs, this wasn't a problem and even when direct switch attaching of devices first started, the issue didn't occur. Now, however, as machines have got faster, it causes problems. What happens is that the machine boots and brings up it's network card. The switch sees this as a state change on the port and blocks traffic. In the meantime, the device has done it's DHCP request, timed out, given up and, depending on the nature of the device and it's OS, given itself an APIPA address (Windoze amongst others) or simply refused to boot (PXE).

Trust me, I've seen this countless times (including on my MCE system as I build it!) and unless you are likely to have a bridging loop (with 1 switch, you won't have ) then switching off STP will cause no harm.

Thanks fellas, with the help i got from all you and a little more tinkering i've gotten my MD's going and my wireless router going. Dont mean to be a annoying pr!ck, but i have one last thing to solve. I am able to play all my media, audio and video on the core, all my media show up on the md's, but nothing plays after selecting the media and selecting play. I've tried both md's and no go. any ideas?

Thanks fellas, with the help i got from all you and a little more tinkering i've gotten my MD's going and my wireless router going. Dont mean to be a annoying pr!ck, but i have one last thing to solve. I am able to play all my media, audio and video on the core, all my media show up on the md's, but nothing plays after selecting the media and selecting play. I've tried both md's and no go. any ideas?

what actually happens when you select media to play on an MD? Does it appear to try to start playing, and then just stop? Or does it give an error message?

Either way, you probably need to start reviewing your log files. Ones to start with are the DCERouter log on the core (in /var/log/pluto) try tail -f /var/log/pluto/DCERouter.log or whatever the spelling is to monitor the log realtime as you try to play media - you should see the DCE messages being passed and mediaplugin setting up the media stream. Also monitor the xine log on the MD.. this is the more important one.. you need to find out what that log is called based on the device number and it is probably easier to monitor it by sshing into the core and tail -f /usr/pluto/diskless/##/var/log/pluto/??_blahblahh.log

where ## is the device number of your MD and ?? is the device number of the xineplayer device on the MD and blahblah is the rest of the log file name! This should indicate it receiving DCE messages telling it to play a media stream... and then perhaps an error message telling you why it couldn't. Possibly as simple as it couldn't find the file/path because the media mounts and symlinks are screwed up in some way... but we need to see those log entries first before we can start troubleshooting why it can't play.

Also, care to explain what was wrong with your network to begin with? It could be useful to others.

The DCERouter seems to believe that your MD device is not registered "The target device 49 (routed to 49) has not registered." I don't know if this is a normal error message, but the device definitely should be registered - look in your web admin under the Devices Tree and navigate to the MD device. In the right hand pane the device details will appear. At the bottom of the first block just above Save/Cancel there will be a text line "Registered:" this should say Yes.

Perhaps this could be effecting Xine and causing the other errors? In the Xine log it is indicating several issues not being able to initialise various drivers or streams... not sure what is causing this but perhaps the MD hasn't registered properly?

The DCERouter seems to believe that your MD device is not registered "The target device 49 (routed to 49) has not registered." I don't know if this is a normal error message, but the device definitely should be registered - look in your web admin under the Devices Tree and navigate to the MD device. In the right hand pane the device details will appear. At the bottom of the first block just above Save/Cancel there will be a text line "Registered:" this should say Yes.

Perhaps this could be effecting Xine and causing the other errors? In the Xine log it is indicating several issues not being able to initialise various drivers or streams... not sure what is causing this but perhaps the MD hasn't registered properly?